by Zoe Marriott
“What destiny could require a girl to kill a man before she has even bled herself? I—” She cut herself off with a gasp, and the silence stung like vinegar in a fresh cut.
I huddled in upon myself, waiting. But whatever she might have said next remained unuttered. She ended their argument by going into labour nearly a month early.
A day later, she was delivered of a small, rather delicate, but ferociously healthy baby. A boy. A brother. An heir. They called him Da Xiong.
I do not think Mother marked or even remembered her strange conversation with Father. I certainly forgot it at the time.
But Father did not forget.
Mother often liked to say: All great men make enemies.
My father was a very great man.
Twenty years before my birth, raiders from the Land of Clouds attacked the borders of the empire – and Father, not yet sixteen years old, received the red-sealed scroll, calling him to fight. To represent the honour of the House of Hua on the battlefield. And that he did. By the age of thirty, he rose to the rank of Iron General of the Southern Provinces, and became the late Emperor Gao Zi’s favourite. When the emperor’s half-brother marched on the City of Endless Serenity to try to depose Gao Zi, Father’s armies confronted them at the Heavenly Gate of a Thousand Steps that led to the Imperial Palace.
Even though the usurper’s army outnumbered them four to one, my father’s soldiers drove the traitors back, back, down the thousand steps one by one, until they had nowhere to go but into the great Gold Dust River. There, the Imperial Army drowned them.
But it was in this moment of triumph that Father himself was undone. Taking a spear thrust to his leg that shattered the bone and shredded its tendon, he fell into the same waters that had swallowed his enemies. Hidden amongst tall reeds, he lay undiscovered for four days. By the time he was found, the emperor’s best doctors declared him beyond any mortal aid.
I was less than a month old, and my birth had been a hard one that nearly ended my mother’s life. But that did not stop her.
She packed up household and baby and drove us halfway across the country to the capital city in under two weeks. When she arrived, she took over my father’s care and, defying all the naysayers, brought him back from the brink of death.
Overjoyed, the late emperor offered my father a title, lands, the income from a hundred towns and a post as his close advisor. But Father had been changed by his four endless days lying in the shadow of death, and the following weeks of sickness. He would never be fit to run into battle again.
With polite reverence, he refused the emperor’s honours and begged only to be allowed to go into peaceful retirement, to raise sons who would fight for the emperor’s sons one day.
It was a risky choice. Had his Imperial Highness been offended, our family might have paid a heavy price. But though Gao Zi was a stern ruler, he was also known for his wisdom. He granted my father’s wish and sent him home with trunks loaded with gifts of books, precious relics and only a reasonable amount of gold. More than any of these, though, my father treasured the emperor’s sincere blessing.
“Hua Zhou,” the emperor is said to have declared, “is the most honourable, dutiful and humble servant I have ever had. Let him be praised, and let others seek to emulate his example! If only the heavens had given me a son such as him.”
Others were … not so pleased with my father.
Empress Zhangsun had borne the emperor two sons. One had been banished for plotting against the emperor, and the other died falling out of a window whilst drunk. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she was said to have taken her husband’s words as a personal slight upon her and her offspring. The empress could hardly revenge herself upon the emperor for the humiliation, but my father and mother were another matter.
Zhangsun bided her time. It took over seven years, but at last, she acted to take her revenge. And just as my father’s bravery had led to his downfall, Empress Zhangsun’s resentment led to hers. Implicated by the assassins’ accomplices, she was disgraced, deposed and exiled.
We were lucky, of course. If she had been the mother of a son who stood in the line of succession, perhaps it would have saved her and sealed our family’s fate. But her only surviving children were girls. And so the emperor took a new empress – his Most Pure, Fragrant and Virtuous Concubine Wu Fen, a lady who had long been his favourite, and who had just been delivered of a healthy boy, Li Xian. And when Gao Zi died, it was Wu Fen who was at his side. And it is Wu Fen who reigns now, not as regent – but as Daughter of Heaven. Our first female emperor.
While these cataclysmic changes shook our nation like earth tremors shake the distant mountains, equally astonishing changes were happening within the House of Hua. For, as the weeks passed, and things settled down again into the normal pattern of day-to-day life, Father carefully, methodically – stealthily – began to test me.
At first he must have been disappointed. Despite the seemingly impossible feat I had accomplished, I showed no signs of supernatural speed, enhanced reflexes or unusual strength. After some thought, he offered me a variety of weapons, in case my gift was that of inborn aptitude, but he desisted after I dropped his dagger and nearly pierced his foot with it.
Still, he could not get the memory of that night out of his head. His daughter, standing in the darkness, bloodied and unafraid, victorious at only seven years old. If I had been a boy, he would have known I was meant to be a general, a commander of great armies, and scourge of the enemies of the empire. All a son would have needed to be worthy of this great destiny was training.
But girls could not be trained in the martial arts.
Yet, against all odds, against all the teachings of sages and scholars and the rules of common decency and common sense, a little girl had saved his wife and unborn son.
What if one day she was called on to do so again?
What if that was her fate?
How could he leave her, leave his family, unprepared for that day?
His answer came the afternoon when he attempted one final test. He had noticed that I tended to have a somewhat reckless bent – skipping happily along the tops of the tall, meandering walls of our home compound (before my mother scolded me down), attempting to climb scraggly vines to reach the peak of a large rock (before the servants caught me), and teasing the legendarily savage guard dog that resided on the steps of the mayor’s house (before making a friend of it). Was it possible, he wondered, that my gift was a lack of fear?
He had one of the servants call me from the women’s quarters to his study, knowing that I would have to cross the large, open central courtyard to do so. Then he took his blunt practice sword and concealed himself behind the squat, dark trunk of the venerable magnolia tree that dominated the centre of the courtyard with its clouds of pink, wine-cup-shaped blooms.
As I passed beneath the magnolia tree – reaching up on tiptoe to brush the very ends of my fingers through the golden pollen of the sweet-smelling flowers, as I always did – Father lunged at me from his hidden position, sword raised.
My shrill shriek banished any suspicion that I was a fearless child. But even as the cry broke from my throat, I felt something shift within me, some odd, yet utterly natural twist of my inner self that happened without conscious thought, without any movement of my physical body at all.
As a tiny fish swiftly darts and manoeuvres among the stones and currents of a river, so I slipped sideways through the light to what I felt, without really knowing how or why, was a place of safety.
That is how it felt to me. To my father’s eyes, though, something extraordinary occurred.
I vanished.
Later, as I sat in the calm quiet of my father’s study, clutching the last crumbs of a piece of honeycomb – a rare treat – and still trembling a little, he explained to me what I had done. What I was.
There were many names. Some of them I had even heard before, in the stories my mother or my nursemaid told me before bed. Light-shaper. Mask-maker. Shadow-weav
er. Child-of-a-phoenix.
Banner-breaker.
Once there had been hundreds like me, my father said. They had been the pride of the great Red Emperor, the founder of our nation. Their name came from a trick they had famously deployed against the barbarian invaders from the west, who had sought to take the empire for their own. If the tide of battle seemed about to turn against the Red Emperor, they would hide him with shadows, and create a perfect illusion of the imperial banner elsewhere on the field. When the enemies swarmed that new location to try to capture the emperor, they would instead find themselves surrounded and cut off, while the prize they had sacrificed themselves to seize melted away like smoke in their hands.
But the number of such illusionists had dwindled as the empire grew. My father guessed that it was because, while at first banner-breakers were respected – and trained – regardless of gender, once the empire was established it became seen as undesirable, even unnatural, for a girl to possess the ability. Females who could use qi this way were taught that their gifts were shameful, or taught nothing at all.
Now only a handful of people – boys – in each generation would be born with the gift, and they were highly prized, regardless of rank or family status, and earmarked for high military service.
“My commanders saw me as a gift from heaven and welcomed me into their ranks – but they always insisted my ability was kept a closely guarded secret. One should never freely give away useful information, unless in doing so some more useful information can be gleaned. The only ones alive who know it are the emperor himself, your mother … and now you.”
As I watched, spellbound, he lifted the familiar green-brown head of his walking stick – and the handle was a carved dragon no more, but a live one, curling around his broad, scarred hand. Its scales glinted as it stretched, sinuous and catlike, a tiny puff of smoke escaping the be-fanged jaws. I gasped, expecting to smell the magical scent of a dragon’s vapour, but the only smells were honey, sweat-dampened silk and the warm, waxy wood that panelled Father’s study. With the next blink, the dragon was frozen in stone again, stiff and unmoving.
“It makes sense now,” my father said, a gleam of feverish excitement lighting his eyes. “Your ability to shape illusions is what saved you and your mother from the assassin. Not extraordinary speed or strength. He simply didn’t see you. He drove himself forward on to your blade.”
For an instant, I felt the smooth wooden grip of the kitchen knife against my palm – smelled the wet gush of iron-stinking blood drenching my hands. I still did not remember much of what I had done. I did not want to. But sometimes … sometimes I imagined how it must have felt when the knife went into that man’s stomach. And my imaginings felt like memory.
I swallowed hard, the taste of honey turning sickly on my tongue. “Why do I have this gift? What use can I make of it?” I imagined what Mother would say – how she would purse her lips and how her eyes would dart away from me – and whispered, “Will … will any man wish to marry a girl with such a power?”
My father’s face changed then, and he leaned forward, grasping my forearm. “Any man worth marrying will treasure you for all your unique beauties and abilities, just as anyone with a discerning eye values the natural patterns in a unique piece of jade. You have a great destiny, my daughter. The heavens have granted you this power for a reason, just as they did me. Perhaps, like the great lady hero Dou Xianniang, you will undertake a legendary quest of honour for the gods. Or perhaps, like the wife of the Red Emperor, one day you will ride into battle at your husband and sons’ sides. Many stories call the Red Empress a banner-breaker, you know.”
None of the stories Mother or the servants had told me said that. None of them mentioned the Red Empress ever being in battle at all, let alone taking the role of banner-breaker. And Dou Xianniang was supposed to be a fallen woman, an outlaw, who had come to a sticky end. As must all women who failed to respect their rightful place.
Perhaps they tell different stories to daughters than sons…
Unaware of my thoughts, Father squeezed my arm and pressed a dry, whiskery kiss to my forehead. But he looked away as he added, “Besides, there is no reason for anyone but you and I to know of this.”
Three
Ten years later…
he war horn’s low, melancholy voice rang out as I threaded a strand of scarlet silk on to the shuttle of my loom. Strung tight on the warp, thousands of coloured threads – a half-formed picture of red-crested herons in flight – seemed to tremble.
There was a sharp clatter. Mother, half-hidden from me behind her own loom on the opposite side of the sunny room, had dropped her bamboo shuttle. Her deft fingers were frozen on the silk pattern of pink peonies taking shape on her long, narrow kesi tapestry. The single dark eye that I could see flashed with startled fright.
“It is not the call to battle,” I spoke into the sudden silence hastily. “It – it is only the call to gather. We’re not under attack.”
Yet.
For months we had listened in increasing disbelief to the stories of the rebellion across the five rivers. Stories of the rogue general – Feng Shi Chong, nicknamed the Leopard – who had betrayed Emperor Wu Fen, and the terrible crimes he and his army of murderers, rapists and thieves had carried out. And now – now the war horn. The army was calling the men of our region, our town, to gather.
They were looking for conscripts.
Mother gave a long, shaky exhalation of breath. “They have come for him.”
The great horn bellowed again.
As the sound faded, I heard the distinctive squeal of the stiff screen door that led to Father’s study on the other side of the courtyard. Then the crunch, drag, crunch, drag of his steps as he passed by the weaving room on his way to the great gates that guarded our home.
Mother’s hands lifted slowly from the tapestry on her loom and pressed over her face, concealing her expression from me. I didn’t need to see it. I knew. I stared blankly at my own weaving, telling myself comforting lies: They can’t call him up. Not again. They wouldn’t. He’s too sick, too weak. He already gave up his health and his youth for the empire. There’s nothing else left.
Nothing, said a cold voice at the back of my mind, except his life.
My own hands, still clutching at the shuttle and thread, did not seem to belong to me. They looked white and frail, like bird bones. A memory clutched at my heart – an old man’s skinny, pale ankles, and his thin fingers twitching against my skin. In the corners of my vision, shadows swarmed, running up the walls wherever the light failed to reach. Against my will, I jerked around to look.
There was nothing there.
I laid the shuttle down with a soft click. There was a rising babble of men’s voices outside. The village gathering place was only a few paces beyond the copper handles of our jade-and-vermillion-painted gates. The sight of those gates was barred from me by the tapestries and heavy, carved wood screens that divided the women’s quarters from the courtyard. But if I were to step into the hallway, or better yet stand in the reception room in the southern wing of the house, I would be able to hear properly. Hear what the men were saying.
Hear which names were called.
I rose to my feet in a graceful, unhurried movement, allowing the emerald-and-russet silk of my shanqun gown to fall into place around my slippers with a soft whisper as I rearranged my shawl over my elbows.
“Where are you going?” Mother asked, voice sharpened with a razor-edge of panic. “You cannot go out!”
“I know, Mother,” I said calmly. “Of course I won’t go out. I just need to use the water closet.”
“Zhilan! Please, don’t—”
Don’t leave me alone, don’t act so strangely, don’t disappoint me by failing to act like a proper daughter again…
I cut her off gently. “I will be back in a moment, I promise.”
And it wasn’t a lie. I had no intention of going out. And would use the water closet. Eventually.
I
left the room before she could say any more, pulling the screen door gently shut behind me. Then I hooked my shawl messily over my shoulders, seized great crumpled handfuls of my skirts in both hands and darted down the narrow, wood-panelled passageway, soft slippers skidding over the floorboards. A lightning-fast glance out of the wooden lattice that separated the women’s wing from the reception room showed me a view of shadowy banners, hanging still in the air above the top of our outer wall, dark against a pale sky. The imperial banners? I scurried on, hoping to avoid any servants on the way—
“Sister?”
I stopped in place, squeezing my eyes shut. “Yes, Xiao Xia? Shouldn’t you be with our brother in the schoolroom?”
“I heard a big noise – a strange noise – and there is shouting outside. What does it mean? Are – are the bad men coming? The ones who eat little girls?” Her voice wobbled on the last words.
My shoulders slumped involuntarily.
Letting go of my dress, I crouched down to hold out my hand. Xiao Xia’s plump, dimpled fingers grasped mine, and I realized that she was shaking, though I no longer was. My hand looked strong, weathered and capable around her tiny one – like my own familiar hand again.
Gazing into Xiao Xia’s wide, worried eyes under her thick fringe, I reminded myself that I was sixteen, nearly seventeen. An adult. I had stopped cutting my hair and begun pinning it up into a tall conch-binding two years ago. Xiao Xia was only eight.
I permitted myself a short, resigned sigh.
“There’s no need to be afraid. The bad men are miles and miles away! They’re just having a public meeting, and Father has gone out to deal with it. Why don’t you come and sit with Mother and me? I’ll let you sort my threads.”
“The pretty silk ones?” she squeaked, her face lighting up.
